Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T11:18:22.719Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Nonfinite Verbal Forms and Natural Language Ontology

from Part V - Typologizing and Ontologizing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2022

By
Gillian Ramchand
Edited by
Daniel Altshuler
Daniel Altshuler
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

This chapter will argue that the ontological categories that we require for understanding meaning and meaning composition in natural language cannot be exclusively proxied by external objects in the world or judgments of truth. In other words, a set of metaphysically justified ontological objects is not what is required for natural language ontology, and the latter field should be considered a distinct philosophical and analytical exercise. The chapter takes as its central empirical ground the meaning of ’nonfinite’ verb forms in English. Paradoxes relating to the English progressive and passive constructions will be examined to show that lexical conceptual content needs to be defined more essentially, and that the integration of such essentialist content into forms which ultimately have extensionalist import requires the reification of the symbol qua symbol and the explicit representation of the utterance situation.

Keywords

imperfective paradoxresultative participletruthcontentsymbolreferencecontext
Type
Chapter
Information
Linguistics Meets Philosophy , pp. 302 - 334
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexiadou, A., & Anagnostopoulou, E. (2008). Structuring participles. In Chang, C. B. & Haynie, H. J. (Eds.), Proceedings of WCCFL, Vol. 26 (pp. 33–41). Somerville: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Altshuler, D., Parsons, T., & Schwarzschild, R. (2019). A Course in Semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Asher, N. (2007). A type driven theory of predication with complex types. Fundamentæ Informaticæ, 84(2), 151–183.Google Scholar
Asher, N. (2011). Lexical Meaning in Context: A Web of Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baggio, G. (2018). Meaning in the Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Barwise, J., & Perry, J. (1983). Situations and Attitudes. Cambridge, MA: MIT press.Google Scholar
Bennett, M., & Partee, B. H. (1972). Towards the Logic of Tense and Aspect in English. Technical report, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A First Language: The Early Stages. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Champollion, L. (2015). The interaction of compositional semantics and event semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy, 38, 31–66.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1995). Language and nature. Mind, 104(413), 1–61.Google Scholar
Dowty, D. R. (1979). Word Meaning and Montague Grammar: The Semantics of Verbs and Times in Generative Semantics and in Montague’s PTQ. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Embick, D. (2004). Structure of the resultative participles in English. Linguistic Inquiry, 35(3), 355–592.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (1994). Essence and modality. Philosophical Perspectives, 8, 1–16.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (2005). Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (2014). Truthmaker semantics for intuitionist logic. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 43(2), 549–577.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (2017). Naive metaphysics. Philosophical Issues, 27(1), 98–113.Google Scholar
Gehrke, B., & McNally, L. (2015). Distributional modification: The case of frequency adjectives. Language, 91(4), 837–868.Google Scholar
Hallman, P. (2009a). Instants and Intervals in the Event/State Distinction. Ms., University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Hallman, P. (2009b). Proportions in time: Interactions of quantification and aspect. Natural Language Semantics, 17, 29–61.Google Scholar
Henderson, R. (2015). Pluractional Demonstrations. Paper presented at SALT 26.Google Scholar
Hinzen, W. (2016). On the grammar of referential dependence. Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric, 46(1), 11–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kamp, H., & Reyle, U. (1993). From Discourse to Logic. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Kaplan, D. (1989). Demonstratives. An essay on the semantics, logic, metaphysics, and epistemology of demonstratives and other indexicals (Ms. 1977, reprinted). In Almog, J. P. J. & Wettstein, H. (Eds.), Themes from Kaplan (pp. 481–563). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kratzer, A. (2000). Building statives. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 26, 385–399.Google Scholar
Landman, F. (1992). The progressive. Natural Language Semantics, 1(1), 1–32.Google Scholar
Landman, F. (2008). 1066: On the differences between the tense-perspective-aspect systems of English and Dutch. In Rothstein, S. (Ed.), Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect (pp. 107–166). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Leech, G. (1971). Meaning and the English Verb. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1973). Counterfactuals. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986). On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Marr, D. (1982). Vision. A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company.Google Scholar
Mittwoch, A. (1988). Aspects of English aspect: On the interaction of perfect, progressive and durational phrases. Linguistics and Philosophy, 11, 203–254.Google Scholar
Moltmann, F. (2017). Natural language ontology. In Oxford Encyclopedia of Linguistics (pp. 51–94).Google Scholar
Moltmann, F. (2020). Natural language ontology. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, R. E. (2001). Language Development: An Introduction, 5th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.Google Scholar
Parsons, T. (1990). Events in the Semantics of English: A Study in Subatomic Semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pietroski, P. (2018). Conjoining Meanings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Portner, P. (1998). The progressive in modal semantics. Language, 74, 760–787.Google Scholar
Portner, P. (2003). The temporal semantics and modal pragmatics of the perfect. Linguistics and Philosophy, 26, 459–510.Google Scholar
Potts, C. (2007). The dimensions of quotation. In Barker, C. & Jacobson, P. (Eds.), Direct Compositionality (pp. 405–431). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pustejovsky, J. (1995). The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Ramchand, G. (2014). Stativity and Present Tense Epistemics’. Proceedings of SALT 24: 102–121.Google Scholar
Ramchand, G. (2018). Situations and Syntactic Structures: Rethinking Auxiliaries and Order in English. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 77. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strawson, P. (1959). Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Taylor, B. (1977). Tense and continuity. Linguistics and Philosophy, 1(2), 199–220.Google Scholar
Vendler, Z. (1967). Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Vlach, F. (1981). The semantics of the progressive. In Tedeschi, P. & Zaenen, A. (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 14: Tense and Aspect (pp. 271–292). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×